Glenn Close, (born March 19, 1947, Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.) American actress who drew acclaim for her considerable range and versatility.

Glenn Close.

PRNewsFoto/PNC Financial Services/AP Images

Close grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, a town her ancestors had helped to found. Her father was a well-known surgeon who left the mansions and well-manicured lawns of Greenwich to open a medical clinic in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) when Close was 13. She spent several years in Africa and at boarding schools in Switzerland before returning to Connecticut to live with her grandmother and attend Rosemary Hall, an exclusive girls’ school in Greenwich. Following her high school graduation in 1965, Close spent several years touring Europe and the United States with a musical group called Up with People.

In 1970 Close enrolled at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. After graduating in 1974 with a degree in drama and a Phi Beta Kappa key, she joined the New Phoenix Repertory Company and made her Broadway debut that same year. A succession of other theatre roles followed, and Close’s reputation grew. In 1980 she received a Tony Award nomination for her role in Barnum, which drew the attention of motion-picture director George Roy Hill, who offered her a role in The World According to Garp (1982), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.

Following her film debut in Garp, Close was nominated for Oscars as best supporting actress for roles in The Big Chill (1983) and The Natural (1984). In 1987 and 1989 she received best actress Academy Award nominations for her roles as a psychopathic temptress in the thriller Fatal Attraction and as the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons.

In the 1990s Close starred in such films as Hamlet (1990); Reversal of Fortune (1990); The House of the Spirits (1993), based on the novel by Isabel Allende; and the journalism comedy The Paper (1994). In 1996 she took such varied roles as the first lady in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! and Cruella De Vil in a live-action remake of the Disney film 101 Dalmatians. The following year Close starred as the vice president, alongside Harrison Ford, in the thriller Air Force One (1997). Close’s subsequent film roles included the ringleader of a group of ideal suburban wives in The Stepford Wives (2004) and the mother of a nervous bride in Evening (2007). In Albert Nobbs (2011), which she cowrote, Close starred as a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to find work in 19th-century Ireland; for her performance, she received a sixth Oscar nomination. She later played the leader of an intergalactic police force in the sci-fi adventure Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

Although best known for her work onscreen, Close had a distinguished career as a stage actress. She received Tony Awards in 1984 and 1992 for her work in The Real Thing and Death and the Maiden, respectively. In 1995 she impressed Broadway audiences as the delusional former film star Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical production of Sunset Boulevard, for which she won another Tony Award for best actress in a musical. Her performance as an imposing matriarch in a Broadway revival (2014–15) of Edward Albee’s existential drama A Delicate Balance was lauded for its precision.

One of the few performers to be nominated for the top awards in film, theatre, and television, Close also earned Emmy Awards for her roles in the television movie Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (1995) and the dramatic series Damages (2007–12), in which she played a high-powered attorney with Machiavellianproclivities. In 2005 she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (2003), a television remake of the 1968 film.

Learn More in these related articles:

...of the Roses (1989). One of Douglas’s landmark roles was in Fatal Attraction (1987), in which he portrayed a family man terrorized by a woman (memorably portrayed by Glenn Close) with whom he has an adulterous affair. In the same year, Douglas delivered an Oscar-winning performance as a ruthless, morally empty financier in Wall Street...

New York City thoroughfare that traverses the length of Manhattan, near the middle of which are clustered the theatres that have long made it the foremost showcase of commercial stage entertainment in the United States. The term Broadway is virtually synonymous with American theatrical activity.

annual awards for distinguished achievement in American theatre. Named for the actress-producer Antoinette Perry, the annual awards were established in 1947 by the American Theatre Wing and are intended to recognize excellence in plays and musicals staged on Broadway. Awards are given for best...

Britannica Web sites

(born 1947). U.S. actress Glenn Close was nominated for acting awards in every medium in which she appeared-theater, film, and television. She received six Academy Award nominations, four Tony Award nominations with three wins, and 10 Emmy Award nominations with three wins.